Period Accurate combat.

[Kyyrn]

I've recently started a rather massive undertaking in writing an RPG that, without becoming overly complex, creates a free-form magic system and accurately mimics period combat, maintaining a high degree of lethality while emphasizing the concept that skill was the ultimate decider in combat, rather than luck.  I've been doing quite a lot of digging into historical manuscripts (namely Talhoffer) in an attempt to semi-accurately (I do not quite enough dots in scholar to be able to call my self a true researcher, and sometimes movements just don't translate well to rolls) reproduce combat from the 15th century to the renaissance.  If anyone out there has any idea or perhaps training in historical fencing I'd love to get some input or design ideas.  I won't bore anyone by posting any portion of the rule set here, but if anybody has any interest in this sort of thing I'd love to compare notes.  Beyond the fighting, I'd like to get some insight into how the King's Court functioned, and some general historic information on life from the 15th to the 18th century.  Thanks for any insight!!!

[Tadanori Oyama]

Did you say "free form magic system" and "period accute" at the same time?

[Setherick]

Did you say "free form magic system" and "period accute" at the same time?

You said it so I didn't have to. And you're talking to the guy that converted COC into a Puritan America setting a few years ago.

[Kyyrn]

The goal is to build a dark, visceral fantasy game.  Fantasy yes, but with enough reality sprinkled to keep a patina of realism.  I don't want to make a historical RPG by any means. Reality is mostly just pretty damn boring.  Elements of reality can keep immersion, too much focus on it can get tedious.  It's like a CoC game set in World War 1 run by someone who knows quite a bit about the actual history. It just brings a new element to the game.

The goal behind it is to create a fantasy game that differs from the norm, trying to place a focus on things like court politics and intrigue vice kicking in the door and killing everything that moves.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, and I enjoy kicking in the door as much as the next guy, but it's just challenging to take on something new.  Anyways, I know it's kind of random, but that's the thought process behind it in very brief form.

[clockworkjoe]

If I were you, I would track down a PDF or print copy of the Riddle of Steel RPG. Look at this review: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9361.phtml

When a blow lands, if it wasnt instantly fatal, then the defender receives three types of damage.

The first is Shock. Shock is, well, the shock from the moment of impact; this damage is immediately subtracted from any remaining dice in the defender's dice pool.

Pain is the second. shock is a one time effect, and your combat pool refills (as you will see below); pain triggers every combat round, subtracting from your dice pools each and every time.

The third is blood loss. Each round, you make an endurance check with the TN = to your blood loss score. when you fail, you lose a point of health... and when it reaches 0, you die from blood loss.

The reason this all means the first person to get hit will die is because your lose dice from your pools; an aggressor can take advantage of this and gains a greater and greater advantage over you, meaning you will be harder pressed.

This is realistic, and works well. And it does something well that was the goal of the game's author. He wanted to ask a question: What is important enough that your character would enter combat, if he had the choice, even if it could mean his very real death. No hit points here, no bouncing off 100' cliffs or pierced by dozens of arrows without effect.

It also asks you how you fight; in real life, people dont waltz out, generally, and bravely challenge others to combat, when its a matter of life and death. They try and outnnumber others, flank them, ambush them. They may well fight dirty, except in duels of honor. One-on-one "fair" fighting might well see you dead... in one blow.

With asking these questions, though, comes back in the whole idea of spiritual attributes. What is important enough your character would risk dying for? When spiritual attributes are firing, especially when several overlapping ones firing off at once, it cna transform a mediocre fighter into a one man killing machine.

"Damn you, Baron Zieg! You killed my wife and son! I swear, by all that's holy, you can throw your entire army at me, but I WILL have your head!"

I gotta say, I love it. I love it alot.

[Kyyrn]

Yeah, I started with that book, and it is a pretty fair wealth of information and ideas.  I've been expanding on it and changing it to fit my designs a little more.  Hopefully making it bigger, faster, stronger (though I'm afraid of it turning out lumbering, awkward, and dull).  It can be hard to judge your own writing, all in all and really difficult to see how your concepts play out.  Anyways, just thoughts.

[Kyyrn]

In retrospect, this was possibly the worst idea I ever had.  Abandoning it.  At least the research was interesting.